'Person of Interest' recap: "Try The Eggs Benedict"

This week's number is Samuel Gates, a tough-on-crime judge with so many enemies JC has no choice but to stay close in case someone makes a move. Which is the set-up of nearly every episode so far: JC stalking our weekly number. But this one is different, because the judge's son (also named Sam) gets kidnapped, so JC reveals himself to the judge as the only person who can help him (the kidnappers already told him he can't go to the police or the FBI. When the nanny ends up dead, she's no longer suspected of being involved, but Carter ends up on her murder case (because someone saw JC leave the scene), with Fuscoe by her side.

JC tracks down a guy whose middle name is Josef with an F, and he quickly figures out it's a Eastern European street gang called -- I kid you not -- Szajka Pruszkow Dziewiec (SP-9). Yes, JC just knows that name by heart, apparently. That's what all those years in the secret Army will teach you. SP-9 tells the judge they don't want money; they want him to throw a case in his court, called "The People vs. Angela Markham." The judge is confused, because she's just some woman who mowed down a guy in a parking garage -- a simple hit and run. But JC knows these people are out to kill Sam Sr., and that Sam shouldn't cooperate. He asks him to stall the trial, and make it look like he's cooperating. While the judge stalls the trial by a day, Bench follows Angela Markham. He catches a phone call between her and an SP-9 guy in which she seems to holding all the cards in some sort of business arrangement. Meanwhile, JC tries to break the SP-9 member he's got locked in his trunk. He eventually gives him an address to the place he goes to get paid, and JC finds a room full of cash, which he steals to try to hurt them. He also kidnaps another guy, and the two fight it out until one reveals the name of the SP-9 boss, Koska.

Bench figures out that Angela's the key to SP-9 laundering millions of dollars every day -- their own money and that of many rich and shady clients. Before JC and Bench can find Sam Jr., the judge rules Angela Markham innocent and heads to get his son back from SP-9. Bench and JC know what's in store -- both of the Sams' deaths -- so JC takes Angela at gunpoint and follows the judge to the meet. In perfect TV timing, JC shows up just as Koska is about to kill Sam Jr. in front of his father. He has Angela at gunpoint, of course, but that's not all: He also comes bearing enough information about SP-9's scheming for Koska to know they're screwed. As they draw guns to shoot JC and the Sams, JC shoots them all instead. But he doesn't kill, of course. That's not his way. He takes Koska for a ride, as Bench slips the laundering information to the district attorney who'd been trying to prosecute Angela for DUI. JC leaves all the gang members and Angela tied up right where Fuscoe and Carter's search for the nanny killer has led them. He watches from afar as they arrest all the bad guys.